"I could take a wild animal and turn it into a good military animal in three or four months," military dolphin trainer Victor Grigoriev said in a History Channel program about the military dolphins.

Whatever you do, don't try to control them using electrodes in their brains — the Soviets tried this and through trial and error discovered the animals usually died. "There's just no reliable way to force dolphins to take orders like go to the left or go to the right," Vadim Belyaev said.